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info to add to personal life: After receiving her BA in textile design, she lived in Banff and Montreal, Canada before deciding to pursue graduate work at Yale in 1983. (AiA June 1999, Simon)
Themes and inspiration
Though Hamilton studied textile design throughout her undergraduate career, she pointedly decided to focus on sculpture as a concentration in graduate school, as opposed to weaving. She claims that, when making that decision, she was “interested in the relationships between things in space. And more important than the things themselves is the way they come into relation.”[1] While in Canada, and while teaching at UC Santa Barbara, Hamilton began connecting photography and performance with her experience with textiles, creating an interdisciplinary artistic dialogue that is evident in her work, which often "weaves" different elements together into one image or includes textiles like pressed shirts or work uniforms.[2] In addition to her educational background, her personal identity and interests directly inform her artistic creation. She identifies herself as a reader: of space, of objects[1], of literary criticism, of poetry, and even of dictionaries; thus, the act of reading, words, and books often make their way into her installations, videos, and created objects.[3] Her work also explores themes of humanity, from gender and the body to suffering and power.[4] As a conceptual artist working with video, sound, and interactive installation, the elements of time[5], change, and decay also play roles in her work. {CITATION?} Hamilton's installations are meant to be experienced fully. The installations often respond to the spaces and cities in which they are created, using objects that reflect the history and identity of the culture.[2]
Select works: 1984-1990
suitably positioned- In 1984, one of Hamilton’s first installations, suitably positioned, set the tone for her later works, encompassing many of her artistic methods: installation, object-making, photography, and performance.[1] For this piece, she constructed a suit made of a thrift-store men’s suit and toothpicks. She then stood, wearing the suit, for the duration of the installation within the studio with viewers walking around the artist without interacting with her. The suit was originally made as a part of room in search of a position, which, after exhibition, Hamilton believed didn't reach pictorial success and decided to rethink her use of these made objects.[1] However, she then incorporated the toothpick suit into her suitably positioned installation, which finally created a connection between the object, in this case, a suit, and the figure, herself within the suit. This installation was directly associated with her body object series.[1]
body object series- While working on suitably positioned, Hamilton began to think about her subject matter differently, hoping to create an installation that "demonstrates a relation instead of making a picture of a relation."[1] This thinking led the artist to begin creating her body object series, a collection of photographs that began in 1984 with further editions captured in 1987, 1994, and 2006. In the series, Hamilton, along with photographer Bob McMurtry, shot photographs of herself wearing constructed objects, like her toothpick suit.[1] The coverings of the body in these photographs represent what Hamilton calls, "the articulation of the self at the boundaries of the body."[2]
privation and excesses- In 1989 in San Francisco, Hamilton exhibited privation and excesses as a part of the Capp Street Project. The artist used $7,500 worth of pennies to cover a large portion of the gallery floor within a thin coating of honey. In a chair on the edge of the field of honey and pennies, a figure sat, wringing their hands in a hat full of honey.[2]
linings-
Select works: 1991-2000
aleph-
mneme- The title of this installation was derived from the Greek word for "memory."[2]
indigo blue- One of Hamilton's most well-known works, indigo blue was exhibited in 1991 in a garage near the public market in Charleston, South Carolina.[6] She created the piece as a commissioned work as a part of the "Places with a Past" exhibition within the Spoleto Festival, in which artists chose a site and responded to both the historical and current context of the city.[7] The installation was an homage to labor, respectfully commenting on and remembering the process of manual work through sculptural elements like a pile of 47,000 blue work uniforms and sacks full of soybeans hanging on a wall.[6] Behind the table with stacked uniforms stood another table at which a writer sat, using an eraser and saliva to remove writing from small, blue-covered books from back to front, one by one, while the eraser shavings were left to accumulate within the books throughout the duration of the installation.[7] The action of erasing the past serves as another memory of labor[1], and the names embroidered on the shirts echo the history of the laborers living in the city.[2] The back wall held the hanging bags of soybeans that slowly spilled and began to sprout from the humid air within the space, calling attention to the atmosphere of South Carolina.[6] The title of the exhibition, as well as the incorporation of blue objects, likewise reference Charleston's history and indigo's economic significance as a plant and dye in the city.[1]
Select works: 2001-2010
(the picture is still)-
face to face-
script-
human carriage- As a part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's The Third Mind exhibition in 2009, for which various American artists were invited to participate in a contemplation and representation of the ways in which Asian literature, art, and philosophy are incorporated into, changed by, and transform American cultural trajectories.[8] Hamilton's installation for the exhibition was entitled human carriage, which incorporated her interests in humanity, language, text, and physical material.[9] Hamilton's installation referenced the movement and transmission of cultural information and identity through the use of books and a mechanism of travel.[10] The artist used tied-together cross-sections of book volumes, which were called "book weights," that were stored in piles at the top of the museum.[10] The book weights were then attached to a pulley system "carriage" operated by a "reader" at the top of the museum that manually operated the carriage to sent books to the bottom of the rotunda where they accumulated in a pile. Along the building's existing spiral ramps, Hamilton also constructed a spiraling pipe that acted as a travel mechanism for a smaller bell carriage that housed Tibetan cymbals.[9] Released by the "reader," the bell carriage descended along the pipe, meeting the books at the end of the ramp while filling the space with ringing along the descent.[9]
Select works: 2011-2018
VERSE-
the event of a thread- In 2012, Hamilton exhibited her installation entitled the event of a thread at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.[11] The installation featured a white curtain that spanned the 55,000 square feet of space, punctuated by large swings. The installation, like many of Hamilton's works, changes over time, involving the audience in an interconnected, multi-sensory experience of space.[12] For this installation, the artist involved the use of radios in paper bags that were available for viewers to carry around; the audio on these radios was broadcasted by two actors from the theater company SITI who read selections of text by various authors at one end of the room.[11] On the other end, a writer sat at a desk, writing sentences. The artwork changed day to day; the murmurs, cell phone rings, and laughs of the viewers, as well as the sounds of reading, writing, and cooing pigeons filled the space with sound, while the viewers’ swinging swayed the curtain. The audience was able to experience the space in different ways: swinging, looking in through a window, lying on the ground, or simply walking through the exhibition.[11]
Cortlandt Street station project- The New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts and Design Program commissioned Hamilton to create an art project as a part of the reconstruction of the Cortlandt Street subway station that was destroyed on September 11, 2001. This project, to be completed by 2018, is similar to her previous work, VERSE, in that it weaves together words, in this specific case, from notable historical documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The text will be white and will appear upon or within the surface of the white walls of the hub, covering up to 70 percent of the walls' surface. Like much of her work, this project is intended to be experienced, as opposed to simply viewed. Each person travelling through the station, whether tourist, regular commuter, or 9/11 survivor will have a different relationship to these words.[13]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Simon, Joan (2006). Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects. New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller & Co., LLC. ISBN ISBN 0-9743648-5-1..
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: invalid character (help) - ^ a b c d e f Ann Hamilton: Mneme. Liverpool: Tate Gallery. 1994. pp. 10, . ISBN 185437138X.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) - ^ Simon, Joan (June 1999). "Ann Hamilton: Inscribing Place". Art in America.
- ^ Dobrzynski, Judith H. (Sunday, May 30, 1999). "Representing America in a Language of Her Own". The New York Times.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "ANN HAMILTON: the event of a thread : Program & Events : Park Avenue Armory". Park Avenue Armory. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
- ^ a b c Bruce, Chris; Solnit, Rebecca; Spector, Buzz (1992). Ann Hamilton Sao Paulo/Seattle. Seattle: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington.
- ^ a b Sean Kelly announcement for Spoleto Festival, New York, 1992.
- ^ "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989". www.guggenheim.org. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
- ^ a b c "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989". Guggenheim Museum. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
- ^ a b "Ann Hamilton Studio". www.annhamiltonstudio.com. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
- ^ a b c Smith, Roberta (December 6, 2012). "The Audience as Art Movement: Ann Hamilton at the Park Avenue Armory". The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
- ^ "'Time Stopped—And Then Suddenly Rushed Again Toward Us'". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
- ^ Dunlap, David W. (April 29, 2015). "At Cortlandt Street Subway Station, Art Woven from Words". The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2016.